2012 Odyssey in the sky

by Eleonora Anello

It has achieved a big fame without ever being produced. A new form of collective expression that feeds itself and is capable of producing clean energy, in turn, strictly zero emissions, could make overfly in the sky of London during the forthcoming Olympic Games in 2012.

So far Fantozzi had succeeded in this aim. Famous final scene of Italian movie "Fantozzi contro tutti" (1980) in which the accountant, in a moment of rebellion, with the power of thought, expressed a very bad opinion on “Megadirettore” (the Director), which is stamped into the sky. Will be the case in the City? The design of the spectacular and futuristic observation platform will communicate with and with the help of visitors. A burst of data and digital images will be visible in London simply looking up to heaven in The CLOUD, project conceived by an international team of professionals, led by Carlo Ratti, a pioneer of new technological frontiers of architecture, engineer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and director of the laboratory SENSEable Cities.

«The CLOUD was born as a powerful symbol of the next Olympic Games 2012 -says Carlo Ratti- and as a new landmark for the city of London: a permeable and light structure composed of lightweight ETFE spheres illuminated by thousands of LEDs controlled as pixels to create a three-dimensional display in the skies of London fed by real-time information from around the world».

Composed of a series of transparent towers high 120 meters, «The CLOUD will be able to collect and reprocess data and environmental information in order to redistribute them in an universally accessible way, functioning as a great communication device at an urban scale. Google will provide further aggregated anonymous information relating to online searches made by Londoners, which will then be displayed on surface of The CLOUD, like a barometer that shows in real time the mood and the functioning of the city».

A true crowdsourcing experiment, to be carried out the project requires a collective effort at the time, especially economically. The site Raisethecloud.org is coordinated for the purpose by the experts of the presidential campaign of Obama, while the Facebook page, already has nearly 1400 members.

Ratti is determined to transform the CLOUD «in a symbol of "global"ownership: built through a system of distributed fundraising, The CLOUD will be the first symbol of bottom-up architecture, built by the people and for everyone to participate actively in the Olympics».

It is not the first time that the sport is given to the ecology. We had already given the news about the 2009 World Baseball Cup, a true green event, and the separate waste collection launched by Conai inside Italian stadiums. This time the task of bringing the sport to environmental issues is entrusted to The CLOUD, a spectacular new and sustainable communication space.